With 15 seconds left, down 1 to the Nuggets, the Cavaliers inbounded from their own basket, eschewing advancing the ball to half-court in favor of getting Kyrie Irving at full-speed going to the rim. The Nuggets essentially only needed to get in front of him as he was the Cavs' whole offense down the stretch. Instead...

Ty Lawson would miss a driving layup and the Cavaliers hang on to win, 100-99.

You have to give credit to Byron Scott for trusting Irving in that situation and for getting him the room to operate by inbounding full-court. It goes against traditional thought and involves trusting a rookie to go basically 94 feet against a defender. For Denver, what in the world were they thinking letting him get all the way to the rim? Unbelievable let down by the Denver bigs who needed to step up to help there.

The team announced Wednesday that standout rookie Kyrie Irving has been cleared to return to the court for Wednesday night's game against the Indiana Pacers.

Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving has been cleared to resume game play by Cavaliers Team Physician Dr. AJ Cianflocco of the Cleveland Clinic. Irving suffered a concussion during the fourth quarter of the Cavaliers game at Miami on Feb. 7 and missed the past three games. He will be active for tonight’s game against the Indiana Pacers at The Q at 7:30 p.m.

Irving missed three games after sustaining the head injury against the Heat last week, missing a Cavaliers win over the Los Angeles Clippers and losses to the Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers.

A front-runner for Rookie of the Year, Irving is averaging 18.0 points, 5.1 assists, 3.5 rebounds and shooting 49.2 percent from the field in 29 minutes per game. Prior to the concussion, Irving had appeared in every game for the Cavaliers.

Last Wednesday, Irving was listed as day-to-day before Cavaliers coach Byron Scott announced last Friday that Irving would miss last weekend's games as he awaited medical clearance.

At the start of the 2011-2012 season, the NBA implemented a new policy for handling concussions and a player's return to the court.

The Cavaliers informed the media via press release on Saturday that an MRI revealed that Varejao fractured his right wrist this week. He will be sidelined indefinitely.

Cavaliers forward/center Anderson Varejao received a follow-up exam and MRI on his injured right wrist today at the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Sports Health with Dr. Thomas Graham and Dr. Tom Anderson. The injury occurred during last night’s Cavaliers game against the Milwaukee Bucks at The Q in Cleveland with 9:01 remaining in the third quarter. Varejao did not return to play the remainder of the game.

The results of today’s MRI revealed a non-displaced fracture of the wrist. He is now listed as Out and a timeline for his return to action will be established next week after further testing and examination is conducted at Cleveland Clinic. His status will be updated as appropriate.

Thanks in large part to Varejao and star rookie point guard Kyrie Irving, the Cavaliers are just outside the playoff picture in the Eastern Conference, with a surprising 10-15 record that put them in tenth place in the East standings. An extended absence from Varejao kills their playoff hopes, as he was Cleveland's only true big man playing meaningful minutes. Cavaliers coach Byron Scott will likely elect to fill the minutes void by offering more time to 2011 lottery pick Tristan Thompson.

Varejao was averaging 10.8 points, a career-high 11.5 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 1.4 steals in 31.4 minutes per game this season. Through Friday, he was the NBA's No. 1 offensive rebounder, according to Basketball-Reference.com.

Sessions we knew about, as his agent has been talking about how there's not room in Cleveland if the Cavs take Kyrie Iving with the first pick next week. But Hickson is a different matter, and moving him could be a difference maker as the Cavs try and make substantial changes to their roster in a rebuilding effort.

Hickson was at one point considered a major building block for the Cavs, but he struggled under Byron Scott, especially at the offensive end where he shot 46 percent, a significant drop off from previous seasons once he was given more minutes. Hickson is still young, though, and on a team that isn't, you know, hemorrhaging like roadkill, he could be a useful frontcourt rotation player. Maybe Cleveland can ship him to a contender needing talented big men who aren't aging, somewhere that needs depth. Oh. like Miam....oh. Nevermind.

If the Cavs are liquidating assets, though, that's a good plan. Keeping Varejao for more than a draft pick isn't a terrible idea, considering he was a defensive player of the year until his injury. But the Cavs need to be keeping an eye out for acceptable offers and still keeping the bar low. The objective needs to be to move every veteran contract that is on the books after this year. Varejao can help a contender, but there's not much he can do for the Cavs and they need to fully commit to a rebuilding era. Moving Sessions and Hickson, who are both younger pieces, is still a good start.

Any time the greatest coach ever in a sport retires, finding a suitable replacement can be sort of difficult. Right now, there don't appear to be any serious lead as to who will replace Phil Jackson as the coach of the Lakers, but here's one guy that most definitely won't be: Byron Scott.

I guess fearing that Scott might take his talents to Hollwood, the Cavaliers will not allow Scott to talk with the Lakers, if it were requested by Laker general manager Mitch Kupchak, reports the Plain-Dealer.

Scott of course was a key part of the a few Laker teams in the 1980s and was always a fan favorite. He's had coaching successes in New Jersey and New Orleans, but endured quite a frustrating year in Cleveland this season. But that's not on Scott. That's on injuries and basically to put it bliuntly, a complete and brutal lack of talent.

Scott has three years left on his contract with the Cavaliers and doesn't have an opt-out clause written in, so he can't pull the plug and leave even if he wanted to. There's not necessarily any indication Scott was a serious candidate in the first place, but even if he was, he's not now.

"A Lakers source also said that management and ownership are split on Shaw," the report says. "The Buss family, who owns the Lakers, has a reputation of keeping their coaching searches close to the vest."

The report also mentioned that one or maybe two members of the current coaching staff would get consideration, most likely meaning Shaw and assistant Jim Clemons.

The Lakers coaching search is an intriguing one because it's a storied franchise with a ready-made championship club in one of the league's brightest markets. Whoever gets that job better be ready for it. Maybe they should just like Kobe be a player-coach.

Byron Scott may not be on the hot seat, but should he be?Posted by Matt Moore

There is a difference between not having much to work with and doing very little, and not having much to work with, and doing even less.

That's the summation of Byron Scott's work with the Cleveland Cavaliers this season.

Scott came into a job having been sold, probably, that he would be coaching LeBron James and the rest of a team that won more than 50 games four of the past five years prior to his hiring. He thought he would be competing for a championship. When James left and Scott was left with the remains, a pass was automatically granted to him by media, fans, experts. What are you going to do with that roster? Then the injuries hit. How are you supposed to win with a bad team that's also injured? And so on. Excuses were made, accepted, and away from the spotlight of national attention, Scott was slotted into a quiet "Poor guy" model and forgotten about.

Consider this: Mike Brown was fired despite a win percentage of .663 with the Cavaliers. Byron Scott currently has a .469 winning percentage and a .208 mark with the Cavs. Scott didn't come with championship experience as a coach. Why then is his work with the Cavaliers being glossed over so smoothly?

The answer is a few signature wins. The Cavaliers have knocked off the Celtics, the Lakers, the Heat, and the Knicks (thrice) this season, which Cavs the Blog author John Krolik says lead to the false perception that the Cavs are "scrappy." In reality, these were simply the result of an 82 game schedule. In the course of such a long season, you're going to have random games. Not just games where a good team isn't feeling it. Just games where the other team is better that night. A good team can play well and still lose to a bad team. This isn't to take credit away from those Cavalier wins, they count in the standings as much as the Celtics' wins do. But it's the overall body of work beyond the wins and losses, especially for a rebuilding squad, that shows the value of the team. And the value of the Cavaliers is terrible. That's mostly on account of roster. That's partly on account of Scott.

The Cavaliers have shown poor late-game execution, have struggled with lineup management, have failed in communication and coherency on both sides of the ball, and have illustrated a lack of effort in the majority of their games. Those are not solely accountable to a bad roster. A large part of those problems is coaching. Meanwhile, as the losses have piled up, Scott has not stuck by his guys. Instead of protecting a young roster trying to find its way and seek some progress, at every turn Scott has publicly, not privately, publicly berated his team. Running down a young squad for their effort in practice is one thing. Doing it in the post-game gaggle is another. It doesn't motivate the players. It doesn't help the organziation move in the right direction. It just makes it look like Scott's trying to duck the blame for the losses.

Byron Scott was dealt a bad hand and played it poorly. He was never known as a coach to develop young talent around. In New Orleans, he buried Darren Collison and Marcus Thornton for being rookies despite their showing significant talent. The younger Cavaliers have shown little progress towards developing into quality players. Scott may have been a great fit for the LeBron Cavaliers. We'll never know. We do know one thing. He has not been a great fit with a rebuilding Cavaliers team.

Heat forward LeBron James says Miami's visit to Cleveland to face the Cavaliers on Tuesday can't be as bad as the first time around. Posted by Ben Golliver.

Back in December, Miami Heat forward LeBron James made his first return to Cleveland to face the Cavaliers. James was booed like crazy, taunted with t-shirts and signs, but ultimately helped the Heat defeat the Cavaliers.
The Heat make their second trip to Cleveland on Tuesday and James told the Sun-Sentinel that he thinks the worst is behind him now.

"It can't get no worse than it was December 2nd," James said, as he prepared for his second homecoming. "I know that. I know that for a fact."

"The best thing about last time, it was a back-to-back," he said. "This time, we get in a day early, so I get the opportunity to go home and spend some time with my kids, spend some time with my friends and family who I haven't seen back home in a while."

James sounds like he's almost looking forward to the trip this time, when last time around he was clearly nervous and apprehensive (and rightfully so).

The best quotable about Tuesday's game, without question, goes to Cleveland Cavaliers coach Byron Scott, who just makes his team sound so pitiful.

"I know it will be different," Cavaliers coach Byron Scott told reporters in Cleveland. "The next time we played them in Miami, it was different, it was a much more physical, more aggressive and tighter.

"Like anyone who runs into a bully the first time, you pee down your leg. Then you realize, the bully ain't that tough and you stand up to him."

Back in December, the Cavaliers, despite getting steamrolled, still resembled a professional basketball team. Now? They hold the worst record in the NBA, traded away their best remaining healthy player and have watched seemingly half the roster go down with various injuries. In other words, the Cavaliers are set to realize on Tuesday, once again, that the bully really is that tough.

A few weeks back , we noted that Cleveland Cavaliers forward Antawn Jamison had suffered a finger fracture that would keep him out 5-7 weeks and that the timing of the injury coupled with the anticipated recovery timeline meant that it is possibly season-ending.

Jamison admitted Thursday night he's done for the season. It's the first time he has ever broken a bone, and he has been surprised how much having a cast on his left hand limited him.

"No video games," he said with a smile. "It's been straight movie time for the past two weeks."

After the surgery, he spent a week with his family in Charlotte, N.C., but he's back to support his teammates in the final 16 games of the season.

His Cavaliers teammates need all the support they can get, as they dropped a whopper in Portland on Thursday, losing to the Blazers 111-70. After the game, Cavaliers coach Byron Scott bashed his team's focus : "Our team is just so soft mentally, it's unbelievable."

The Cavaliers currently hold the league's worst record, at 13-54. As we noted when Jamison was first injured, Cleveland is headed for a top three pick in the NBA Draft Lottery so there was no good reason for him to attempt a return this season.